Are whole body treatments better?

The body is thoroughly connected through the nervous system and soft tissues. When you walk or run your arms swing as your legs carry you forward. These patterns are built into our nervous system so to make our movements efficient and our motions smooth. When there is a disfunction within our bodies where a joint or muscle isn’t moving or is contracted these patterns which used to be efficient at moving us around become burdened with compensation. You may spend more time on one leg during the gait pattern, this excess loading will cause more forces through a joint and certain muscles. The natural twisting motion that happens when we walk will start to be more one sided and distorted. As the body continues to accommodate dysfunction it become less and less efficient this starts to engage more and more muscles with more force to accomplish the same movement. This over-engagement of muscles all over the body leads to pain in certain muscles which are distant from the source of the compensation pattern.

For example a tension headache may develop due to a limp caused by a sore knee and improper coordination of the gait pattern during a stride, leading to a neck tension and referred pain into the head. Therefore, we must consider more than the neck and head during treatment. A successful treatment will involve identifying the problem in the knee and treating all the compensations up from the knee as compensation tension travelled upwards towards the neck. This type of treatment provides better relief of pain in the short and long term.

These type of compensations can become very complicated and multiple injuries create a network linked compensation which can involve many different parts of the body and require a stepped approach to resolve. Allowing the skilled therapist to identify possible problem areas and release complex issues will continue to help make progress towards a pain free body. People who had been unsuccessfully treated through conventional avenues may be able to find long lasting pain relief through a whole body approach.

Some notable people who had notable successes and have been able to pass knowledge through history:

-Lise Goodhart developed MyoPostural in 1980’s to address whole body mechanics and get to the source of the problem.

-Dr. Andrew Still developed Osteopathy in the 1890’s finding lesion patterns throughout the body and then resolving the cause through an understanding or anatomy and body mechanics.